PowerEdge 2600 Server
 

Hi,
I have a Dell PowerEdge 2600 Intel Xeon Processor 1800 sitting in my garage gathering dust, and I am very keen to learn about Linux in the hope of switching from windows. I am very very very new to all of this. Good news is I have approximately 3 months off from University to learn all about Linux. Any advise, help in right direction, names of tutorial sites, etc would be most appreciated, as the truth is I really don't have a clue where to begin and what to do first. So if there is a list of things I must do please someone let me know.
ps. I hope I have posted this thread in the right place.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
:study:
eyeoflight
:D

Simple
 

Go to your local store and pcikup a set of disks for a distro. I'd advise Ubuntu.

Yes, you can do it for free across the board, but this will get you up and running fastest.

Here's a simple Google search for way too many resources.

http://www.google.com/linux?q=dell+p...mozilla-search

BTW: If you want to follow the Redhat steps, but want a completely free version, look into CentOS.


Give me a shout if you get stuck.

Thank you that's a great start.

Dear Admiyo,

I took your advice, downloaded Ubuntu but I have had problems installing it onto my computer. I keep getting the following message:

/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off (initramfs)

I have tried to Google this, and I looked up the thread on this and various other forums regarding this, but it seems no one has a satisfactory solution... well not one that I can understand anyway.

I wondered, seeing as you offered your help in your previous reply, whether you have an idea as to what this whole thing means and what I may do to fix it, or turn on the job control????

Many thanks,

eyeoflight

Hi, sorry about the previous... I have now managed to install UBUNTU. I installed the Alternate version rather than the live version and that did the trick. Although now my Network Autoconfiguration has failed, so back to the grindstone...

Thanks
eyeoflight

Eyeoflight,

Which network adapter are you attempting to use?

If it's the embedded/onboard adapter you may need to verify it's enabled in the BIOS settings first. You might also want to look into updating the system BIOS, if it's really out-of-date.


If it's a card in a PCI/expansion slot it either might not be working, or be an unsupported model.


I don't have any 2600's around, but I have 2800's and they include onboard Intel PRO/1000 NIC's, which are recognized fine by the 2.6 kernel. The 2400's had Intel PRO 10/100 NIC's, which also shouldn't pose a problem...

I imagine your 2600 probably has either an embedded Intel PRO/1000 NIC or some kind of Broadcom GbE NIC. Not sure on the Broadcom ones, but the Intel should work fine...

Worst case scenario, you always could install an Intel PRO/100 or PRO/1000 PCI NIC in one of the expansion slots, if the onboard one either is bad or incompatible/buggy with the current kernel. The PRO/100 cards are very inexpensive, even new, and I love them with linux.

Hope this helps.

If you are starting, there are some really good distros for you;

Freespire

X/K/Ubuntu (simple, but stable and I like it. I've used many different ones, but came back)

PCLinuxOS

Mandriva (Mandrake, whatever they call it now)

Hope that helps!

BTW, on Ubuntu's site, you can order a free disc. No scam...

Hi strick1226,

Which network adapter are you attempting to use?

I am using D-Link DWL 120. Though this now does not seem to be the problem, as I found out (after extensive research :study: ) that I needed ndiswrapper, which I managed to download onto a floppy. I am a little confused actually.

The main problem right now is partitioning disks. No disk comes up for partitioning. What I'm getting is:

[!!] Partition disks

This is an overview of your currently configured partitions and mount points. Select a partition to modify its settings ....

Guided Partitioning (which brings up "Guided - use entire disk and set up LVM" (which hangs), or "Manual" (which takes me back to original Partition disks window)
Help on partitioning



Undo changes to partitions
Finish partitioning and write changes to disk

<Go Back>

Having just done a test on the CD-ROM(s) integrity, it's interesting to see the result has come up as failed. It reads:
"The ./pool/main/x/xev/xev_1.0.2-0ubuntu1_i386.deb file failed the MD5 checksum verification. Your CD-ROM or this file may have been corrupted."
I wonder if this has anything to do with the partition disk.

As regards the rest of your message, thank you so much for imparting your expertise. You have no idea how much I appreciate all the help I get. I will use the information you have given when I get to the network issue again, which no doubt will be as soon as I've figured out the partitioning issue. I may ask for your help again if that's ok with you.

Kind regards,

eyeoflight

If you're using the onboard PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller ("PERC") then things can get a bit dicey, it would appear. It uses the "megaraid" driver, and there can be some difficulty getting things to work just right with some distributions.

If this is going to be a dedicated server for you I'd probably recommend using the 6.06 LTS version of Ubuntu, as it will receive security updates for a longer period of time than 07.04.

You also might wish to experiment with other distributions and see how things work differently on the same hardware--you may find some work much better than others, or that you really like the "feel" of one in particular. That's the great thing about linux--there are lots of options! :)

I run CentOS (v5) at home on my server. It's binary-compatible with Redhat Enterprise 5, which is a big player in the corporate world. It's effectively the exact same thing, without official support from Redhat--otherwise it's identical. You could try that and see how it works. I only recently started using CentOS 4 about 6 months ago, after having to use RHEL Server at a client site. I performed an upgrade and it went remarkably well.

With CentOS you could download the installation DVD and select to install the "Server w/GUI" option (or whatever it's called--can't quite remember at the moment). That way, as you're learning the system, you can use the graphical tools to start picking up on things and eventually transition to the text/console-based tools (if that's your thing).

I'm pretty sure CentOS should install on your box without too much trouble. The PERC 4 series controller uses the megaraid driver, which is in the 2.6 kernel.

For more information, check out Dell's linux support information: http://linux.dell.com/storage.shtml

I'm running Ubuntu 7.04 on my desktop system, and love it, but I had a few too many weird issues with the server distro of Ubuntu to feel comfortable enough with it for my server--even though I prefer the Debian package management system.

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask questions--that's the one of the best ways to learn!!

And welcome to the world of open source software! :)